Transforming Tyco with Yammer

Tyco’s products and solutions protect nearly 3 million commercial, government, and residential customers, including 300 airports and more than 1,000,000 firefighters around the world. The company has been going through a massive restructuring, moving from a conglomerate of holding companies to a united global enterprise with more than 69,000 employees in 1,000 locations and nearly 50 countries. Lines of business have been spun off, honing the focus to Tyco’s bread and butter: fire safety and security. “Our employees take a lot of pride in what we do for our customers,” says Vice President of Global Communications Ira Gottlieb. “We have a passion for protecting what matters most.”

What Tyco terms Day One of the new operating company came in September 2012, when it went public as the world’s largest fire and security company. “Our metamorphosis required us to educate employees about the difference between the old Tyco and the new one,” Gottlieb says. “We needed to update them on everything from restructuring to branding. But we didn’t want that process to be passive, we wanted employees involved. So instead of using our traditional intranet and email, we told our people to go to Yammer to find out everything they need to know about the new Tyco.”

Building a More Connected Organization

Tyco turned to Yammer to support a workforce that is vast, global, and on different devices. “We were looking for a social network that was simple, easy to pick up, and could be used in many languages on multiple platforms,” Gottlieb says. “When I discovered Yammer, I was impressed by its feel, features, and benefits. I invited 50 people to test it with me, and the network took off.”

Tyco launched with the goal of getting 10,000 employees on board in the first year. They reached that milestone in 30 days. Today, employees company wide actively collaborate on Yammer, from front-line sales force to senior management.

“Before we started using the network, employees were siloed,” says Community Manager Victoria D’Apice-Loh. “As we acquired companies, we wound up with a messy patchwork that included multiple accounting systems and intranets. Now, Yammer is our common portal, the single place where you can locate people, find help, and work in groups.”

“Yammer has just become the way we work,” Gottlieb says. “We’re using it as both our intranet and our collaboration platform—and for less money than we were spending on our traditional intranet. Which, quite frankly, was terrible. It sat behind a firewall in a server cabinet in Boca Raton, Florida, and the farther away you were, the longer it took to load a page. Plus it was a static, sterile site, no matter what we did. Yammer, on the other hand, is dynamic—and we no longer get complaints about the intranet being slow or down.”

Yammer also streamlines Tyco’s workflow by integrating with the applications employees use every day, including email, Communicator, and Microsoft SharePoint. “Yammer brings all those different tools into one space, all in one seamless integration,” says Social Media Manager Roland Hulme.

Tighter, Faster Teamwork

Yammer’s cloud-based network allows for smoother and faster collaboration. “People can share information about what they do and know to an extent that’s not possible on other platforms,” Gottlieb points out. “Employees can highlight the areas where they’re subject-matter experts, and if they’re looking for help, they can easily find someone with the expertise they need.”

Tyco’s network enables project management company wide. “It’s a powerful tool because you can place files in a location that employees all over the world can access,” Hulme says. “You can post messages right where files are located, talking to people in real time and keeping exchanges within full view of all the pertinent players. Yammer makes time-management, prioritization, and accountability much easier. There’s no logging in to secure servers, chasing emails, or need to use third-party portals to send big files. Everything’s all there, right in the same place.”

Tyco also uses Yammer for onboarding as well as preboarding. New hires are invited to the network weeks before they start. They can review documents, join in team conversations and contribute prior to their first day, accelerating their transition and feeling of connectedness to their new company.

Low Maintenance, Low Cost

“Transitioning from Tyco’s old intranet has improved communication and the bottom line. “When you compare the resources required to support a traditional intranet with Yammer—which is based in the cloud and well taken care of by Yammer support—it’s cheaper from a pure cost perspective,” Gottlieb says. “Plus, Yammer does way more than what we had before, so it’s a really nice value equation.”

“Ten years from now, we’ll ask ourselves how a big company like ours operated without a platform like Yammer,” Gottlieb says. “The days before businesses had social networks will look like the Dark Ages, and every company will have something like Yammer.”

Resultatene

A new corporate culture. Yammer helped transform disparate business units into a single, cohesive company.